


talk to me

by xSkaifayax



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Camping, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, jaylos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 00:27:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17172386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xSkaifayax/pseuds/xSkaifayax
Summary: When Ben takes the Villain Kids camping, Jay is reminded of nights back on the Isle, and he turns to Carlos for comfort.





	talk to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RottenKidNextDoor (PortalofWords)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PortalofWords/gifts).



> Hi, everyone! I originally wrote this over Thanksgiving, but I'm just now posting it (sorry). I am gifting this to RottenKidNextDoor, because they have been my favorite Jaylos author for a long time now, and their works have inspired me to write about Jaylos as well. If you haven't already (which I hope you have!), go check out their writing and fall in love with Jaylos even more! Hope all of you enjoy this fic!

It was too quiet. It had never been this quiet on the Isle. Back there, even the darkest nights were filled with cackling laughter or grunts from alleyways. Back there, silence was associated with the deep dread that nestled itself into Jay’s stomach moments before he got jumped for stealing something too precious. Even in Auradon, _especially_ in Auradon, this sort of silence never fell over him. Here, there was endless laughter, the constant chime of bells, the creaks of the dorms through the night, even Carlos’s soft breathing in the bed next to him. Outside in the middle of night, however, there was nothing - only silence, and it ate away at Jay.

It was Ben’s idea that all of them go camping. The king had been dumbfounded when Carlos let it slip that the VKs didn’t even know what camping was (those who slept outside on the Isle did not choose to do so), and Jay rolled his eyes, wondering why Ben even bothered acting surprised anymore. It wasn’t like friendship and bonding had been booming back on the Isle.

Ben borrowed the royal car the following weekend and drove them all out to the middle of a forest with nothing but trees as far as the eye could see. The group had spent the night sitting around a crackling fire, telling horror stories (Jay took pride in the fact that he, Mal, Carlos, and Evie told stories that elicited the most petrified responses from the others; but he never mentioned that most of their stories were true). Ben, Doug, Audrey, Lonnie, and Jane had done their worst, but in Auradon, there were few horror stories that didn’t involve someone from the Isle. Ben resorted to making things up.

The silence hadn’t been so bad at first, hardly noticeable until everyone retired to their tents for the night. It wasn’t until Jay was alone that it washed over him in waves, bringing him back in time to the Isle and the darkest nights of his life. His chest was tight, his muscles clenched in preparation of whatever was to come. He could hear his own uneven breathing, feel the rise and fall of his chest as he anticipated the worst - nothing good ever happened when it was this quiet. Silence led to surprise, which led to vulnerability, which meant getting the shit knocked out of you and being left for dead.

He counted the lines on the tent’s fabric, pretending they were the tourney field - familiar, loud, welcoming. Still, there was more silence. His heart pounded in his chest. He wanted to close his eyes, to trust that this silence was a _safe_ silence, but what if it wasn’t? No, he couldn’t risk it. He knew what would happen if he did. But the silence was closing in on him, gripping his heart with an iron fist, and something had to give.

He had to do something to make it stop.

He was out of his tent before he could think better of it, the cool, night air biting at the exposed skin of his arms. He glanced toward Audrey’s tent, no doubt she was there, waiting for him, not a single hair out of place and clad in her sexiest pajamas even despite the cold. She might offer relief from this panic, but she wouldn’t understand. Not like Carlos would.

Jay headed over to the small, red tent containing a familiar boy and his dog. “Carlos.” His voice was a harsh whisper as he banged on the tent’s fabric, glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one else found him outside like this. “Carlos, it’s me. Open up.”

There was a pause, then some shuffling, and finally, the squeal of a zipper opening the tent. Carlos’s eyes were wide, concerned, when he found Jay staring back at him. “Jay?” He looked around the older boy, scanning the outside as if he expected trouble. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” His answer was much too sharp to be considered true, but he hoped Carlos wouldn’t notice. “It’s just too quiet. I’m coming in.” He didn’t wait for permission before he shoved past the white-haired boy and climbed into the tent, where Dude laid sprawled across a red and white sleeping bag.

Neither of them spoke as Carlos zipped the tent and Jay settled himself next to the sleeping bag, working hard to keep the furrow from his brow. “Jay.” It was Carlos’s voice that lifted the other boy’s head, and Jay pursed his lips at Carlos’s expression, the lines of concern written across his face. Jafar’s son looked away. “Talk to me.”

“I said it was nothing,” Jay snapped with a little more edge than he’d intended. Carlos moved back to the sleeping bag despite his tone. “I just couldn’t sleep.”

“Okay.” Carlos’s expression mirrored the one he wore when he was concentrating on his laptop, as if there was an internal puzzle he was trying to solve. “So why’d you come here?”

Jay shot him a look, but there was no answer. Instead, he reached down to ruffle Dude’s fur.

“Why not Audrey’s tent?” The look of utter shock written on the older boy’s face was enough to cause Carlos’s face to heat up. He looked down to hide it. “I mean, I heard she was waiting for you.”

 _Me too,_ Jay wanted to say, but watching the crimson tint that colored his best friend’s cheeks, he wasn’t so sure that was the best answer. “It’s not like that.” Except maybe it was. Audrey had been flirting with him for weeks - going out of her way to talk to him, touching him when she didn’t have to, smiling at him in a way she had never smiled at Chad. She would be more than enough company on a night like this one, so why wasn’t he in her tent? Why was he here instead?

He shoved Carlos to the side when the silence became too much again. “Move over. I’m cold.” When Carlos fell to the side of the sleeping bag, Jay took his place, climbing inside when Dude became annoyed with his antics and went to lay elsewhere.

“Hey! You can’t take the whole sleeping bag!” Carlos attempted to pull it out from beneath Jay, to no avail. “You have one! Get your own!”

Jay bunched the sleeping bag around him, holding tighter each time Carlos tried to yank it away. “I want this one.” This was nice - the banter, the sound. It replaced the silence in a way that left Jay feeling more at ease, and he struggled against the younger boy more.

“Seriously, Jay, get out. It’s my sleeping bag.”

Jay smirked triumphantly. “Not anymore. Guess we’ll have to share.”

Carlos rolled his eyes as if this was the nuisance of the century and stopped struggling. “Whatever. Just move over.”

Jay moved to the side just enough for the younger boy to squeeze his body into the sleeping bag, the two of them so close they could feel the other breathing. They were still for a moment, a moment in which Jay contemplated wrapping his arms around the other boy to give them more room, but Carlos’s voice cut through the silence. “Jay, this isn’t gonna work. There’s not enough room for both of us.”

Carlos had started working his way out of the sleeping bag when Jay’s fingers wrapped around his arm, gentle and desperate. “Wait, just… don’t leave yet.”

Carlos paused, arm pressed against the floor in an attempt to move, not even sure he heard it right, but his eyes were wide when they met Jay’s and found that the other boy was serious. The two of them had been friends for years now, and not once had Jay ever asked him something like that.

“Sure.” His voice was so quiet he wasn’t even positive Jay heard him, but he settled down in the sleeping bag, anyway, resting his body next to Jay’s, his head next to Jay’s chest. He didn’t trust his voice, especially not with the way it felt like his heart was rising to his throat as it pounded in his chest, but he had to know, so he spoke, anyway. “Jay? Did something happen?”

Jay’s breathing was uneven as well, the rise and fall of his chest irregular in every way, but Carlos didn’t detect the same concern or surprise he felt, only uncertainty - Jay’s personal brand of panic. “Why do you keep harping on that?” He sounded no more annoyed than he did on any other day when Carlos questioned him about something more than once, but his tone didn’t seem like Auradon Jay. It reminded Carlos too much of Isle Jay - tense, on-edge, waiting for a final blow. “I said I was fine.”

If it had been anyone else - Evie, Ben, especially Mal - Carlos might have let it go, but this was Jay, his best friend. Jay, who had protected him time and time again, kept him safe from both the imaginary demons and the real ones. If Carlos owed it to anyone to keep pushing, to at least _try_ to help, it was him. Besides, there was a reason Jafar’s son was here instead of Audrey’s tent. “I think about it sometimes, too.”

Jay shifted next to him, and Carlos looked up to find the other boy’s eyebrows raised. “Think about what?” There was a catch in his voice that he’d tried to hide, and Carlos pretended he didn’t notice it. Instead, his eyes moved down to the vibrant fabric of Jay’s shirt beneath his head.

“The Isle.” It appeared and reappeared in his nightmares, the memories twisting into a string of restlessness that threatened to strangle him. “What it did to us. What _they_ did.” He might have been imagining it, but he was almost sure he heard Jay’s heart skip a beat beneath him. “Ben always says we’re safe here, but I don’t know.”

 _You’re always safe with me, Pup_. The words waited on his lips, but Jay never spoke them. Carlos knew it was true; some things didn’t have to be said between them, because in thick or thin, Jay would protect Carlos from the world and Carlos would protect Jay from himself. It was what they were best at.

Jay never spoke, never trusted his voice to keep his secrets no matter how much the silence between them gnawed at his chest. Carlos waited with unbridled patience, but eventually, he glanced up at his friend, almost sure he had fallen asleep. When he found Jay’s eyes open, focused on the top of the tent, a crease appeared between his brows, and he squirmed in the sleeping bag until they were as close as they could get, his body a physical reminder that they were here, in Auradon, safe and together. He half-expected Jay to move away, or at least as far away as he could move in a sleeping bag, but he didn’t. Instead, he draped an arm over Carlos’s small frame, resting his chin in a cloud of white hair.

“Sometimes…” Carlos felt Jay’s voice vibrate in his chest, felt the breath leave the older boy in a sigh. “Sometimes if it gets too quiet, I…” He shook his head at himself, at the ridiculousness of the whole situation. “I feel like we’re back on the Isle. Like there’s nothing I can do to stop…” His voice broke off at the end - not a sob, but as close as Jay was going to get. Carlos’s chest tightened at the thought, for the first time feeling the weight of the silence, what it must feel like to Jay. Carlos had always relished silence; Hell Hall had been anything but. It had never even crossed his mind that to Jay, silence brought up entirely different emotions, reminded him of being taken off guard, reminded him of his father’s soundless disappointment.

Carlos pursed his lips, adjusting his body until he could wrap his small arms around his friend, burying his face in Jay’s chest. It was intimate, the type of intimacy they were never allowed to show on the Isle, the type of intimacy rarely shown between two boys even in Auradon, but they were alone, and Carlos didn’t care. Jay, who filled the air with laughter and senseless jokes and never mentioned his own pain, needed him, and Carlos would be damned if he let him deal with this alone.

“Hey, Pup?”

“Yeah?” Carlos’s voice was muffled in Jay’s shirt.

“Can you talk until I fall asleep?”

“Yeah, Jay.” He couldn’t keep the concern from his voice, but knew that with Jay, he didn’t have to. “Of course.”

Jay’s eyes fluttered closed against his better judgment, the warmth that radiated from Carlos’s body eliminating the cold he’d felt spreading across his chest. “And Pup?”

“Hmm?”

“If you tell anyone about this, you’re dead.”

“Whatever you say, Jay.”


End file.
